


A Few Little Words

by awaytobeunshaken



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: General other nasty MU fuckery, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Mirror Universe (Star Trek), do not copy to another site, reference to slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26219932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awaytobeunshaken/pseuds/awaytobeunshaken
Summary: The first meeting between Terran scientist Paul Stamets and Resistance medic Hugh Culber was improbable. Their continuing correspondence was even moreso. As for falling in love, that was completely unexpected.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets, Mirror Hugh Culber/Mirror Paul Stamets
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	A Few Little Words

Hugh watches from across the dining room, far enough away to go unnoticed, but close enough to overhear conversation, with a little help. He taps the device tucked under his collar, amplifying the sounds coming in from Paul Stamets’ direction. 

It had happened, seemingly, in a flash. The rebellion didn’t know a thing about the man until he was assigned to develop a new power source for the Emperor’s flagship. Hugh isn’t sure how long ago that was, but seemingly not long enough for Stamets to realize it made him a target. He’d be much safer remaining on said flagship; they might be able to get an assassin inside eventually, but it wasn’t easy, or they’d try it more often. But here he is, Alpha Centauri of all places (though it made a certain kind of sense; its proximity to Earth meant that enemies of the Empire would be few), waiting at a caf é to meet... someone. 

Stamets fidgets as he waits, twisting his mug on the table, flipping a spoon back and forth under his fingers, until a woman approaches, two children in tow. A secret wife? Lover? No, Hugh realizes as they embrace as siblings would, firmly and enthusiastically but with no lingering touch or hungry gaze.

“Anything?” She asks, her eyes pleading. 

He shook his head. “There’s only so much even I can do. Earth’s a no-go. There’s a starbase, about fifteen light-years from here, that might be an option, but I don’t know if they'd even have quarters available. I can arrange to get you there, though.”

“You said you’d be able to--” She’s cut off by the buzzing of Stamets’ communicator.

“She what? Are you serious? I just... fine. Whatever.” He slams the device shut and stands up from the table, taking the briefest moment to hug the two children, and tell the woman, “The Emperor needs me on the next transport back. Apparently this position isn’t good for anything when it comes to leave, either.”

Hugh tails Stamets as he walks slowly but purposefully back to his hotel. He doesn’t have any camouflage active, but he’s an expert in remaining unnoticed, which allows him to linger outside Stamets’ room as he packs, moving to block the door as it opens. He uses the man’s brief moment of surprise to eye him up and down, letting just one word escape his lips. “Why?”

“What the hell are you talking about? I need to go.” Stamets tries to push past, but Hugh’s solid form doesn’t budge. He takes a breath as if to yell, and Hugh’s arm is immediately at his throat, forcing him back into the room and against the wall as the door slides closed behind them. 

“Sounds like you’re using your position for personal gain.”

“Isn’t that what everyone does?”

“Most people have a rather more singular definition of personal.”

Stamets manages to break free of the hold. “Don’t you touch them!”

“Of course not. My quarrel is only with you and your Empire. I ask you again. Why?”

“We all do what we have to. And right now, I have to get to my transport.” He tries to push Hugh away, but Hugh hooks Stamets’ leg with his ankle, spinning him to the ground, then before he can react, reaches a hand behind his shoulder to the base of his neck, leaving him unconscious. A little trick he’s picked up from his Vulcan comrades.

* * *

Paul is awake only a moment before remembering where he’d been headed. He checks the time. Too late to make the transport, and there won’t be another one until tomorrow. Did that guy have any idea what he’d done? Probably. He certainly wasn’t a friend. Probably a naive resistance type, thinking that delaying him for a few hours was going to irreparably gum up the machinery of the Empire. It wouldn’t, and it wouldn’t even force them to do without his help. The Emperor needed him. All that damned rebel had done was ensure that he’d be punished, more closely watched, privileges revoked, making it even harder to do what little he could to protect Kirsten. 

A sheet of paper flutters to the ground in front of him as he sits up. It’s folded in half, with his name scribbled on the outer surface.  _ A note? Who the hell leaves a note on paper... unless they want to make sure it can be destroyed. _

He should do just that, but curiosity gets the better of him, so he unfolds the paper and begins to read.

_ I was supposed to kill you, you know. Not just because of who you are, but because of what you do. It’s one thing to go along, to accept the world we live in and do your best to survive here. It’s not a position I agree with, but I understand it. But you’ve done more than that. You let yourself, your skills, be seen. And now you’ve been put in a very important position. A risky one, to be sure, but one that stands to benefit the Empire greatly. Yet I let you live. So I want you to do just one thing for me. A small thing. _

_ Tell her the resistance can help her. _

He should have destroyed it before, but he does so now, plucking wires from the room’s communication console until one of them sparks, setting the crumbled note ablaze. He holds it in his palm, watching the flame envelop it, until the intensity of the heat forces him to drop it, and he stamps the little fire out, leaving it nothing more than a smudge of ash on the floor.

* * *

The next transport isn’t scheduled to leave for hours, but he checks out of the hotel anyway and makes his way to the spaceport, not wanting to risk further delay. Luckily, the Emperor is feeling generous, and in lieu of any long-term punishment, insists only that he “make it up to her”. Which he does, not gladly, exactly, but with the knowledge that it’s preferable to any alternative.

Back in his quarters, Paul has time to think about the rebel. About his letter. He knows about Kirsten. If he saw them together, he might have guessed the truth about the kids, too. 

He begins combing through databases, beginning with the Alpha Centauri shipyard records, then working his way through various security camera feeds and even payment records at local businesses, careful to cover his tracks in the computer system. While he does technically have clearance for what he’s accessing, his position isn’t exactly one that would give him the need for it. At a glance it’ll look like a standard check for scientific data. 

And finally he finds what he’s looking for, in one of the camera feeds, the man entering the lobby of his hotel. He smartly has his face mostly hidden, but there’s enough for Paul to know that this is who he’s been looking for. He tries to cross-check against the spaceport records and payment systems, but of course if this guy was resistance, he’d be trying to stay off the grid as much as possible. “Computer, perform facial reconstruction composite and reverse image search, all Imperial databases.” Nothing. Whoever this guy is, he’s been doing this for a long time. He tries de-aging the image; it’s not foolproof, but it’s his next best shot. And there he is, in a Vela Prime elementary school yearbook: Hugh Culber, fifth grade. 

He has a name now, though whether the man is still going by it is anyone’s guess, and either way it’s unlikely to turn up anything useful. He didn’t come through the spaceport through normal channels, and based on the lack of video evidence, hasn’t been there at all. “Computer, show me any unauthorized orbits or landings detected around Alpha Centauri IV in the past week.” Nothing. He tries two weeks, then at a month finally spots something. Not a ship; just a distortion, an odd energy reading. He pulls up the orbital satellite feed for the time in question, and he’s able to see the shuttle, clearly designed for stealth, barely visible even on the visual. But he knows it was there, and from there he can trace it.

He weaves a path through the distortions until he manages to pinpoint the shuttle’s current location. It’s not connected to the main subspace network, but there has to be a comm backdoor somewhere... there. He doesn’t send up an alert, simply leaves the message to display on the console whenever Culber should happen to return.

_ Hello Culber, _

_ Funny how you say the resistance can help her, when they’re the reason she’s in danger in the first place. Meeting that Vulcan, joining up with them, having children with him, only to see him killed in some meaningless attack. You can blow up one arms factory, but the Empire has thousands more. That’s the universe we live in; you can’t fight it. You can only survive, or not. You can’t help her. The best  _ I _ can do is keep the wrong eyes off of her, and I can hardly do that if she’s mixed up with you. Keep away from her. _

Hugh reads the message again, working to retain each word to his own memory before purging it from the shuttle’s data core. He’s not sure how Stamets got access to it in the first place, or even if the message truly is from Stamets or from someone posing at him, but either way, he’s not safe. Not on this planet, and not with this ship. He immediately cuts off all connections to subspace and considers his next move. 

He can’t return to the shuttle, that’s for certain, much less actually use it. He can’t trust that his communications aren’t being monitored, so doesn’t dare contact the resistance to pick him up. He’d prefer not to risk the spaceport; he has false credentials, but security there is higher than anywhere else on the planet. Still, he’s running low on options. He clears the shuttle of any identifying information, and what gear he can comfortably fit in his bag, then takes stock of his credits, setting aside enough for two nights’ lodging and passage offworld. He’ll need to do some shopping.

He winds his way through the darkened streets at the edge of the city, considering Stamets’ message. Of course he bears no illusions of bringing the Empire down completely. It’s not about saving everybody. It’s about holding onto some thread of hope, that there is still some decency in humanity, that this universe isn’t an inevitability, that every so often, someone can be saved.

Today, at least, though, that someone isn’t Stamets’ sister. Tempted though he is, if Stamets truly is working to keep her safe on his own, and based on their previous interaction he has no reason to doubt it, his interference would only put them all at risk. Not that he cares if Stamets risks himself or not; sure, he saw him show some sign of a heart, but humans were often willing to absolve family of sins they would punish a stranger for. It would be best to forget about Stamets and focus on getting offworld and reconnecting with his cell.

* * *

Paul tended not to notice when a new shipment of Kelpiens was brought about the Charon. More to the point, he prefers not to notice. They’ve been considered a delicacy for years, since Emperor Georgiou came into power, but generally Paul is able to channel his distaste into claiming it’s a delicacy too rich for him to afford, or a waste of a perfectly good slave. Really, he just doesn’t much see the point of killing something that isn’t a threat. 

All his excuses don’t mean much, though, when the Emperor has extended a dinner invitation, so he’s hardly disappointed to hear that the shuttle arrived empty. He finds himself feeling more than relief, though; after all, if someone was going to free the “cargo”, why return the shuttle at all?

He doesn’t have any reason to be on the abandoned transport, but his status is enough that no one is inclined to question his presence, either. Security officers and intelligence agents are scouring the transporter logs and navigation records, trying to figure out where and how the theft took place. No one is bothering to examine the hold itself, so that’s where Paul heads. 

Chains and pallets are still littering the floor; discarded bowls hold the remains of whatever meager meals were provided. This is pointless. There’s no need for it, other than cruelty. The Empire should focus on fighting its enemies, not making new ones. He’s not even sure what he’s looking for, but he continues working his way through the discards until he feels something hard tucked into the corner of a mattress. He rips the seam open to ease the item out. A datachip, of older design, but he’s sure to have an adapter for it somewhere. Stamets flips open his tricorder as he hears footsteps approach, feigning his own investigation into the crime.

“Find anything, sir?” asks the approaching officer. 

Stamets shakes his head, and with admittedly no evidence behind the statement, says, “For all we know, they were never here in the first place, and someone just made it look like they were.” Then he slips past the man to hurry back to his quarters.

The script is Vulcan, but the words themselves are nothing he recognizes. A cipher, then. He’ll have to decode it by hand; he can’t risk running it through the main computer. It takes him a few days, fitting it in around his normal work and staying up until the wee hours of the morning to finally decipher the text.

_ If you found this, then maybe you do care, if only a little. I know as well as anyone how hopeless it can seem to fight such power. How hopeless it might well be. But the alternative is to accept it, and my heart won’t allow that. You might think that nothing you can do could matter, but you’re there at the center of everything, literally. You have more power than you realize. And my heart soars to think of what you might be able to accomplish. _

_ Think about it, _

_ Culber _

* * *

Hugh isn’t sure what he’s expecting, if he really thinks Stamets will reach out again, or even think about what he said. Still, he doesn’t go through a single day, make a single journey, where he isn’t searching carefully for some sign that Stamets is trying to make contact. So as he takes up position outside the Barlon Prime prison camp, as he scans the environment for any discrepancy from the intel they received, he knows what he’s really looking for. Hoping for? He wouldn’t go that far. But if there’s...

No, there’s no time to think about Stamets now. There’s work to do, there are people in need of rescue, and care. He charges ahead, taking his position near the rear of the formation, too valuable as a medic to be put at risk. He raises his left arm, activating the personal shield on his wrist as phaser fire rains down from the walls above. That threat soon lessens as their own snipers pick off the first round of defense one by one. 

With the pressure off, Velek is able to make short work of the security panel outside to get them through the main door, and now they all set to work on the guards inside. Hugh creeps along the inner wall, trying to keep in cover as best he can, and firing off shots as needed until Commander Dalsey gives the all clear. And as he receives that message, Culber picks up something else, some weird bit of static. To anyone else it might have gone overlooked, but it’s just the kind of sign Culber has been looking for. 

He carefully adjusts the frequency, turning the volume down and holding the communicator close to his ear, trying to be discreet as he heads toward the main block of cells. The syllables he hears, as far as he can tell, are English, but the audio is compressed and the file has clearly been cut up and stuck back together. One thing is clear though. The voice belongs to Stamets.

_ Maybe you’re right. Maybe the little things do still matter. One shipload of Kelpiens who get to live for at least a little longer might not mean much to the galaxy as a whole, but it means a lot to them. I don’t know what your goal is, if you really think you can change things. _

_ I don’t know. I wish there was a better way to do this. I keep waiting, wondering how I’ll hear from you next. My breath gets lost in my throat when I think of you; I-- I keep wondering if there’s a way to leave all this behind. I have to go. I can’t let anyone hear me recording this. I’m sorry. I hope... _

There’s a noise of footsteps, boots against a metal floor, drowning out the last seconds of the recording before it cuts off. Hugh tries not to worry; after all, Stamets managed to get the message to him, so he must be all right. Hugh imagines him in his rooms; or maybe a lab, whichever would afford him the most privacy; recording this message, nearly whispering into the mic. Maybe after a long day, that blond hair soaked with sweat, falling into his eyes. Stamets is right. There has to be a better way to do this.

* * *

The Emperor doesn’t approve leave often, and was certainly loath to do it here, until Paul proposed the idea of making it a working vacation. He doesn’t much mind; it’s his favorite kind of holiday: alone on a sparsely populated backwater, foraging. If he finds something useful, good for her. If not... well, she enjoys him too much to punish him severely for that.

Despite his isolated surroundings, he doesn’t let his guard down too much, and he realizes what a wise decision that is when his foot brushes against an oddly shaped rock formation. There’s no way the rocks just fell like that naturally; it has to be a trail marker. Which implies that someone knows he’s here. 

Every rational part of his being, everything he’s known to be true all his life, tells him it’s a trap. Someone’s trying to draw him out. He should turn back. But his heart tells him otherwise; that there’s one person who’s always been able to track him down these past few years, to find a way to reach out. And if he’s reaching out now, if he’s  _ here...  _ Paul knows that’s worth any risk.

He hurries through the forest as quickly as he dares, following one nearly hidden marker after another, until he spots the faint static flicker of a camouflaged emergency shelter. He approaches the outline of the structure, his fingers lingering on the material as he walks around the perimeter searching for the entrance. He locates the opening in the fabric, gives himself one more moment to wonder, what if he’s wrong, but he realizes that he still doesn’t care. He lifts the flap to reveal Hugh Culber pointing a phaser rifle at his face.

The weapon drops to the ground almost immediately and Hugh closes the distance between them, stopping just short of an embrace with his hands cupping Paul’s face. Hugh could kill him even now, of course, but Paul is confident by now that he won’t. “You’re so stupid.” Hugh says, almost at a whisper as their faces touch.

“So are you. Anyone could have followed those markers and tracked you down.”   
“At least I kept myself armed. At least I knew what to expect. You could have been walking into anything.”

“Maybe. But I still had hope it was you. And if it wasn’t, well, maybe it didn’t really matter.”

“So stupid,” Hugh repeats; then their lips meet, and for the rest of the day there is no Empire, no resistance, only the two of them come home at last.

* * *

The nature of their communications being what they are, it shouldn’t surprise Hugh to go so long without contact. And it doesn’t, exactly, but it does worry him. Even when Paul has had to maintain radio silence for a bit, there’s always been some sign.

There were ways of slipping aboard the Emperor’s flagship; they weren’t often worth the risk. But Paul is. It takes almost a month to rig together a set of credentials that will pass examination, several more to gain enough trust with minor Imperial governors to be permitted aboard, and finally two more weeks of making his way about the city-sized ship, asking discreet questions, wandering down irrelevant avenues to avoid the subject of Stamets directly.

Finally he gains entrance to the lab, where Paul is resting on a makeshift biobed, unconscious. He’s hooked up to a basic lifesigns monitor, with a nearly empty IV attached to one hand. Somebody cares enough about him to keep him alive, likely because no one else has his knowledge of the mycelial engine, but no one has been truly caring  _ for _ him.

That changes now. Hugh’s falsified credentials are enough to turn away the low-ranked attendant who’s been keeping Paul alive and relatively healthy. It doesn’t take much convincing; this was clearly little more than drudgery for them. And then Hugh sets to work truly looking after Paul, making sure his nutrients and fluid levels are adequate, his clothing fresh, his muscles stimulated. And when all those things are squared away, he has a chance to review Paul’s notes. Not the public ones, of course; the deeply hidden and encrypted journals, that only Hugh knows him well enough to access. While astromycology was Paul’s first love, and is his main line of work now, he came to prominence as a master of poisons, and it seemed he was doing quite a bit of study into various toxins of late. But nothing he wanted anyone to know about, which was interesting. Who, or what, was his target?

Hugh glances up from the PADD toward Paul’s bed. Had he seen movement? There’s been none in the days since his arrival, but there it is again, a twitch of the arm. Then Paul’s eyes blink open, and he almost immediately hops down from the bed. That was entirely unexpected, and if Hugh hadn’t attached the electro-stimulators when he arrived, Paul would have collapsed to the floor immediately. As it is, he’s clearly unsteady on his feet, and Hugh hurries to his side to guide him to a chair. 

“Paul? What happened?”

“The mycelium,” he gasps, “that fuels the reactor, that powers this ship... I thought I could infect it, kill it, stop... her. Instead, it tried to infect me. And it’s worse than that.” Paul turns his face away from Hugh, hiding it in his hands. “I was an idiot. Mycelium is a networked lifeform. Any infection was bound to spread throughout the organism. And this organism is spread throughout our entire galaxy. I knew that, I just... I wanted to be worthy of you.” Paul scratches at a spot on his forearm as tears fill his eyes. “Instead, I fucked everything up.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I was trying to. I was able to use energy from the reactor to send my mind into the mycelial network itself. But then I was trapped there. And everything I found only made things worse. There’s a parallel universe to ours; there’ve been rumors about it for ages, but it’s there. I met another version of myself. And it’s linked to our own universe by the mycelium, too. If I can’t cure this, it’s the end of everything.”

“It’s okay, let’s get you out of here and we’ll figure something out. If you introduced the toxin to begin with then you can work out an antidote, right?”

Paul nods and his breathing begins to slow, though he’s still shuddering in Hugh’s arms. “We’ll need a decoy, though, to at least hold off the Emperor from hunting for me for a little while...”

* * *

“So, you’ve got these holo-emitters all throughout this ship?”

Paul shakes his head. “Hardly. The power draw alone would raise suspicion. There are enough to let the hologram travel between my quarters and my lab and the throne room. Beyond that... well, we’ll just have to hope we’ve put enough space between us by then.”

“And your sister? Do they know--”

“I would never be so careless,” Paul snaps, though he knows the Empire has sources he can’t begin to guess at. The Emperor would hardly say no to something she could hold over his head. On the other hand, he managed to carry on an illicit love affair under her nose for months. Still...

“Still, we might want to make that our first stop.” Paul tries to eye Culber warily, but he’s having trouble focusing. “Look, I know you’ve done everything you could to keep her safe, but I promise, our resources... Paul?” Culber’s eyes were so pretty when he opened them wide like that. “Paul! What’s happening? Stay with me, damnit!”

Paul struggles to breathe, like there’s not quite enough air in the room. He tries to deepen his breaths, but his body is fighting him every step of the way.

“Paul... you said the toxin tried to infect you, too.”

Paul reaches for his sleeve, trying to roll it up, but he fumbles with the fabric, and Culber has to take over.  _ Fuck.  _ He looks down. He hoped that encountering the other Stamets in the network, and their subsequent escape, would at least solve that problem, but the infection is still there, punishing him for his own hubris.

“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Culber snarls. Paul looks up. He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud. “C’mon,” Culber drapes Paul’s arm across his shoulders, “I’m getting you off this ship. Then we can worry about everything else.”

It takes longer than Hugh would have liked for them to make their escape, trying to haul Stamets through the corridor, working against his delirium and lethargy. They’re fortunate, in a way, that none other than Gabriel Lorca had re-appeared to once again try to take control of the Terran Empire. The resulting chaos causes far too much distraction for anyone to notice anything beyond the most pressing tasks. Including two men slowly making their way toward a shuttle bay. 

As soon as they’re settled aboard, Hugh grabs a stimulant from the shuttle’s medkit, slaps it into a hypospray, and presses it to Stamets’ neck. He’s not actually sure it will  _ help _ , for all he knows it’ll just kill him faster, but he has to do  _ something. _ Luckily, this something seems to work; Stamets’ eyes are a little clearer, his vision a bit more focused.

Paul’s hands fly across the shuttle controls, but he pauses as an alphanumeric layout pops up on one of the interface screens on the shuttle’s dash. “We’d better hope my code for these bay doors is still good; I don’t think this thing has enough firepower to punch our way out.”

They both sit in silence for a moment, staring at the emptiness in front of them, until finally a star-filled opening appears at the center, slowly expanding before them. Hugh glances at the man beside him, marveling at the idea that another version of him existed somewhere, wondering what he was like, if Hugh had a counterpart of his own there, and if he loved-- 

Hugh’s heart tripped over the word, allowing his brain to catch up and realize that while Paul might be looking better, he’s not at all well. His breathing remains shallow, his form slumped in the chair. He was dying. He came all this way to save him, and now he’s going to lose him. Then adrenaline kicks his ass into gear again. His years with the resistance have taught him to never, never give up hope, because if you were going to do that, why bother fighting in the first place? Hugh fires up the thrusters, moving the shuttle forward as soon as the doors are open wide enough to let them through, then programs the autopilot to give them some distance from the Charon. “Talk to me, Paul. Please, stay with me. Tell me about... I don’t know... about the “other you” that you met.”

“He managed to get himself stuck in the network, too. And whatever he did there, he got us both out. If I can’t fix this, maybe he can. He was looking for you in there. His you, anyway.”

“His... So we were...”

Paul shrugs weakly. “Maybe we’re inevitable. I don’t know how, but I saw that you, too. He was a doctor, I thought maybe he could help... until I told him I had caused it in the first place. Then he left. When I saw you...” He stops talking as if something had suddenly stolen his voice away, like he suddenly remembered who he was, a man who grew up in a world where the slightest hint of weakness was a death sentence.

“No walls, Paul, please. Not here, not anymore.”

“I figured you’d do the same. Admit it, Hugh, you should have killed me back on Alpha Centauri.”

Hugh found himself nodding. “I was a fool not to. And a bigger fool to fall in love with you. But we can’t change our pasts. And I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have with me at the end of the world.”

“Even though I’m the one who destroyed it?”

“While trying to save it.”

“But I--” Paul’s words are cut off by a desperate shaking throughout his body. “Hugh... it’s so cold.”

Hugh guides Paul to the bunks at the rear of the shuttle, where he grabs an emergency blanket out of the medkit and lays down beside him, wrapping the blanket around both of them. Hugh has seen people fall victim to poisons before, some likely developed by the man beside him, and it looked much like this. Paul was dying. But until he did, Hugh would warm his body for him, breathe for him, do whatever it took to allow them a few more moments beside one another. 

He’s not sure how long they’ve been lying there, but it’s been awhile since the shakes subsided when the shockwave hits. The first thing he does is check Paul’s pulse.  _ Not dead yet.  _ And maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but it almost feels like it’s getting stronger. “Computer, what happened?”

_ “Central computer is offline.” _

Hugh groans. Reluctantly, he peels himself away from Paul’s side and hurries to the front of the shuttle to check the sensors manually. The  _ Charon  _ has departed. No, based on the intensity of the shockwave and the debris in the area, it’s  _ gone.  _ A ship the size of a city, destroyed, somehow. “Hugh, what was that?”

Hugh turns to see Paul standing at the rear of the cockpit; he somehow made it there under his own power, which shouldn’t be possible considering the state Hugh left him in, unless... “Paul, roll up your sleeve.” 

He does so, looking down at his forearm. “It’s gone. He did it. Maybe he figured out something with the reactor...”

Hugh nodded. “ _ Charon’s  _ gone, too. What happens to the empire now?”

“I don’t know, but it’ll happen without me. That is, if you think your people will have me.”

Hugh smiles as he masks the shuttle's energy signature and prepares to go to warp. “As far as anyone knows, Paul Stamets died on the Charon. And you have me to vouch for you. If you’re sure this is what you really want...”

“I have a lot to make up for, and somehow I’ve been given more time to do it. I don’t plan to waste it.”

Hugh punches in a course for Alpha Centauri, and the stars stretch out around them as they go to warp.

**Author's Note:**

> The format of this was inspired by the stunning [This Is How You Lose the Time War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=f6tugek9cf&rank=1). I certainly couldn't come close to the depth or complexity of that book, but the idea of these two idiots figuring out increasingly obscure ways to track down and contact each other just wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> Also, many thanks to the USS Spaceboos for developing the Holo!Stamets idea. After all, just because it's the MU doesn't mean they can't have a happy ending.


End file.
